1. Authoring and implementation [Designer vs. Developer]

   Ribbon provides great authoring story by abstracting the behaviors from specific controls keeping the dynamic nature (look at dynamic gallery, App Mode, Contextual Tabs). The static portion of the UI is defined in the xml markup, and certain interface represents the dynamic nature.

2. Consistent experience provided by platform and automatically chosen based on location

Ribbon UX

• QAT, Tab, Application Menu, Chunks, Contextual Tabs
• Application Modes

  Application Mode provides the easy way to specify a different mode of the applications like Print preview mode. Here you can completely hide the groups/tabs which are not relevant.

• Inbuilt complex controls - Font Chunk, Color Chunk

  Ribbon platform provides these complex controls which supports live preview (See the above picture for the look and feel of these controls)

• Custom Template

  Using custom template, you can define your own custom layout and resize story of a chunk.

  Please note that Ribbon ships with predefined sets of standard template

• Live Preview

  Live preview helps preview the effect of an action before applying it. This is similar to the live preview available with Office 2007 application.

• Gallery

• Hi DPI and Hi Contrast Support (ability to specify the images for different contrast in the xml)
• Accessibility (Ribbon control implement IAccessible interface)
• Resize Rules (Automatically adjust groups when the window is resized) 

For more details refer: Introducing the Windows Ribbon Framework

Coming up next: How to make a simple Windows Ribbon application